Single Displacement
by Meredith-Grey
Summary: Season 6 written a little bit differently. Rory and Jess have always had chemistry; it just took them a couple of hours and a few of spectators to realize how much.
1. Working Man

Summary: Season 6 written a little bit differently. Rory and Jess have always had chemistry; it just took them a couple of hours and a few of spectators to realize how much.

**Working Man**

In all of her teenage fantasies she had never thought of him like this, she didn't have the capacity to imagine what he would look like as a finished, self-made adult. Any traces of the angry seventeen-year-old were gone, replaced with a smarter, wealthier, scrappier version of the Jess she'd known before. A part of him was still feral, unwilling to be tamed and keenly observant. Jess had been on the wrong end of a blade enough times to know how they worked, and know the feeling of the switch clicking and the determined crunch of his fingers beneath the guard. It was the kind of information that never left you; she could tell. He pulled up to her grandparents' house in a Benz, but he still stepped out in a streamlined leather jacket and boots.

"You ready?" He asked, cigarette hanging out of his mouth, unlit for now. He tucked the Marlboro behind his ear. "Or do you need to clear it with grandma first?" Jess smirked jokingly, staring up at her grandparents' house with mostly disguised disapproval. She looked at him for a second before smiling.

The practical side of her couldn't see how he could afford something like that. Jess was a drop out. The car he drove amounted to more than most teachers' annual salary.

"Where'd you get the car?"

"Dealership," he threw her the keys. "You can try it out if you want."

"Did you pay for it?" She asked, remembering that little was beneath the Jess she used to know. Apparently a lot of tax brackets were beneath him now.

"Yeah. It's new."

It was sleek and white, the kind of car that you drove while learning back in your chair, hands loose on the steering wheel. Driving a Mercedes Benz, anywhere was a good destination, according to Jess.

He ended up driving, pulling out of Richard and Emily's fountain adorned driveway. "Where do you want to go?" he asked, the soft lull of the engine easier to deal with than the radio. Rory didn't like to have lots of background noise when she was thinking.

Before she could answer her cell phone glowed blue and demanding on her lap. "Do you mind?" she asked.

"Go ahead."

"Hello." She said at first, letting whoever it was talk her into a contorted expression. "Okay, I guess we can meet you. No. We're on Ellington Street. I'm sorry, Logan. What do you want me to say?" A pause. Her tone went from elevated to polite. "It's fine. I'm glad that your flight went alright. See you in ten minutes. I love you."

Suddenly, the silence in the car was too intense. "That was Logan—"

"Is he your boyfriend?"

"Yes. He just got back from Nebraska on business, and he wants to meet up for dinner."

Jess gradually let up on the accelerator. "Do you need me to drive you anywhere? I didn't realize it was a bad time."

"No, I'm sorry," Rory apologized. "That's not what I meant. I want you to come."

Glancing sideways, she could see the playful arch of his right eyebrow. "Where are we headed," he asked, leaving the obvious unspoken. They both knew what he wanted to say: _you sure?_

"Turn right up here," she pointed, "and follow Point Street until you hit the canal. Then swing another right."

His music taste was similar, but it had been expanded to other genres besides furious, vein-bulging hardcore. Jess played 50 Cent in the car; the raw tracks on _The Massacre_ flowed through his speakers. Rory remembered driving through Hartford with him back in high school, checking out a record store on the south side, cruising with Lane in the backseat, all of them wailing the Marilyn Manson version of "Sweet Dreams" at the top of their lungs. She smiled in spite of herself.

"Have you checked out any new bands lately?" Rory asked. Jess had a somewhat precarious talent for finding good underground music.

"Oh yeah, I'll have to make you a list. Actually, finding bands is kind of my job now."

"Really?"

"I write a column for the Alternative Press."

"Jess, that's really cool. Do you get paid for that? Sorry. That was rude."

He chuckled. "I get paid for a lot of things, column included."

Whereas Jess went for acts like Black Flag, the Wu-Tang Clan, and Liars where lyrical content was the mainstaple, Logan was more about atmosphere and overall sound. Her boyfriend listened to a lot of British rock bands that sounded like the lovechild of Pete Doherty and Jack White, but he heard about most of them in magazines.

They were approaching the pub, one of Hartford's only establishments targeted toward the younger generation. Rory checked herself in the visor mirror, examining her reflection while Jess parked his Benz. When she flipped the visor up she caught Jess looking at her. "What?" Rory asked.

"Nothing." She couldn't see his face very well in the dark. His round yellowish eyes stared back at her, slanted like a cat's. "Lets go."

--

Back when he was nineteen in Venice Beach, lingering after the infamous Summer of Jimmy, Jess could tell you all the meth dealers on the boardwalk. He knew the names of the Puerto Rican babyfaced fifteen-year-olds who would take boxes of Sudafed in exchange for crank. He spent most of his time sleep deprived, roaming at night in the morning all day for three days. Eventually it got to be too much for him—flying all the time, feeling like he was about to launch himself into a clear, perfect oblivion—so he packed up and headed north to Oregon, hoping he'd be able to detox and head back to New York. He slept for a couple days, smoked as much sinsemilla as he could pack into his bowl, and headed home. He hadn't touched it since.

Meeting Logan Huntzburger for the first time made him want to get blitzed. This was who Rory was fucking? He'd only spent a fraction of his advance on the car; that left enough to easily support a three hundred dollar a day crank habit. He wanted to step outside, get some air, and head for the nearest drug dealer.

"So did you guys date?" Logan asked, looking back and forth between Rory and Jess.

"Yeah," Jess inhaled on his cigarette deeply, filling his lungs with tar, nicotine, and mint. "But that was a while ago."

Logan gulped down half of his beer while Rory tried to look away. "We dated in high school," she clarified.

"What brings you to Hartford?" He continued, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, spreading the scent of ale. "Family, business, pleasure," Logan quipped.

"I'm here checking out bookstores for readings. I've got a book coming out in March."

"You write? I shouldn't be surprised. Everyone does nowadays. Don't you have an agent or something? My father owns a publishing company and most of our authors don't do that kind of work. We get interns for that kind of thing."

"Actually, I'm working as my own agent on this project," Jess clarified.

"That's really interesting," Rory tried to straddle the dichotomy between them. "So do you go around and talk to chain booksellers? I've always liked privately owned stores better—"

"What was your publishing company, again?" Logan pressed. "I don't remember."

"That's because I didn't tell you." Jess blew a cool plume of sidestream smoke towards an empty table. "It's Henry Holt and Company."

"Nice," Logan toasted. "Not great, but adequate."

"I'm not hungry anymore," Rory said, throwing her napkin down. "Jess," she slung her purse over her shoulder, "you ready?"

He dropped his burning Marlboro into one of Logan's empty beer mugs. "Nice meeting you."

Sensing defeat, Logan followed the pair as they walked out of the pub, a meter or two in their wake. Jess flipped up the collar of his jacket and lit another cigarette.

"Ace, what's your problem?" He grabbed the cuff of her arm. "Wait."

"Stop it. Go home," Rory instructed, albeit crossly. "Go get some rest, take some Ambien, whatever. If you can't be nice to someone that I have sincerely missed seeing and talking to, then you just need to go home. I wish you had told me when you were actually coming back."

"I was trying to surprise you but obviously you don't appreciate it."

"I'd appreciate it if you got out of my way," Jess deadpanned. "It's a nice car but it can't drive itself."

"Can we please talk?" He ignored the thickness in the air, the dizzying fumes of a combustion waiting to happen. "I'm sorry."

"Don't lie." She opened the passenger door and slid in; Rory almost expected the seats to still be warm.

--

They drove in silence for a while until she started fiddling with the radio dial. Rory stopped when she heart Kurt Cobain crooning: _come_ / _as you are_ / _as you were_ / _as I want you to be _/ _as a friend_ / _as a friend_ / _as a known enemy_.

"You still like him?"

"What?" Rory asked, startled.

"Kurt Cobain," Jess continued. "Do you still listen to him like you used to?"

Her emotions breathed a sigh of relief. "Not so much anymore, actually."

"Me neither. But I might start again since I've seen Courtney."

And they were friends again. He drove her around, let her try one of his clove cigarettes, played some old stuff that neither of them had heard since the '90s.

"I miss the old Trent Reznor," she said. "You know, pre-With Teeth."

He cracked a smile. "I know what you mean. Sobriety just makes him sound like a putz."

With his arms crossed behind his head, his body pressed flat against the roof of his car while they both stared at the dim sky lights, Jess could smell her like a cruel dream. "I'm Waiting for the Man" and its simple guitar riff weakened him to the point of expectation; when he thought of the Velvet Underground it reminded him of teenage sex with Rory. The kind of blind, limitless groping they'd missed out on.

"Is anyone going to notice that you aren't home?" he asked. They'd glided into a warm silence above the poppies and the yew berries. She didn't want to ruin it.

Rory shook her head. "My grandpa's out of town, and my grandma thinks I'm at Paris' house."

He waited for it, knew it was coming.

"But I should probably go home."

There were times when he spoke, when Jess made a strong pulling sound with his larynx, that she could hear the silence and the strain pressing down on them from all directions.

--

AN: I'm hoping to turn this into a multi-chapter fic, but it'll probably top out at five parts. I like hearing what you have to say. Thanks for reading.


	2. Tastes Like Valentines

AN: Thanks for all the reviews for the last chapter; they were very encouraging. I've decided to handle my stories one at a time, so if you're a Haptic Blue/Step Five reader I'm sorry for the wait. Enjoy the chapter.

**Tastes Like Valentines**

Jess angled the clutch forward, speeding down the empty Connecticut highway with the harvest moon dipping into the treetops. He kept glancing at his cell in his cup holder, ruefully hoping that Rory would call him: I'm bored, wanna hang out? I can't put your book down, lets talk about it. I don't want to date Logan anymore, lets fuck. No one's home besides me, lets do it on my grandfather's snow leopard rug in his study.

He had a female Akita at home that usually kept him company on drives like this. It gave him someone to talk to besides himself, and it kept assholes like Logan out of his head. _Not great, but adequate_. In whose opinion? The Huntzburger legal team's, the Gamma Chi Sorority's, the Union of Blonde Fucks at Yale? Either way it didn't matter much to Jess, but it tore him up to know that it mattered to Rory. There were so many things he'd wanted to show her when they were younger that she probably wouldn't want to do now. Things like smoking Black and Milds and fucking in the backseat of his old beat up car. Doing Triple Cs and using his old pocketknife to carve words into the bark of Elk trees, shit he didn't even do anymore. She was the only person he had wanted to share his teenage memories with, but by now it wouldn't seem sincere, just childish.

When Jess was fourteen he'd spray-painted HAIL SATAN on the side of the Catholic school in tall red letters. Rory was the only girlfriend he'd ever had who could laugh about that. He wondered if she'd still laugh at stuff like that, or maybe Yale had trained her to only appreciate elitist century specific types of humor. Whatever the fuck. It was worth a try.

Jess swung the car around on the deserted highway and headed back towards Ellington Street. Maybe she would even sit on the leopard rug with him.

--

Her grandmother had been surprised to find her in bed, but Rory had begged off on the premise of having a head cold. Emily patted her hand and slipped her an Ativan. "Take this, you'll go right to sleep."

"Thanks, grandma," Rory said, hugging her and discretely stashing the pill in her nightstand.

Laying on her back in her Yale T-shirt and tie-dye shorts, she picked at the peach nail polish on her fingers. Or _salmon bisque_ as her grandmother's manicurist had informed her. She'd wanted purple, Rory would have even settled with magenta, but Emily had insisted that it would clash with her gold cocktail dress for Saturday's DAR luncheon. She hadn't made a fuss, so Emily had taken her out afterwards to C. Gilson for a silk chemise and underwear set. Rory got to pick the color this time. She'd gone for a pale blue with hand embroidered yellow flowers, the kind of thing she'd never wear to impress Logan because he was more likely to throw it off and stain it on an ice bucket of Champaign than appreciate the way she looked in her fifteen hundred dollar lingerie.

The doors to the balcony rattled gently, like the handles were being twisted in time. She sat up in bed and covered herself with a lacy pillow. If a burglar made it in maybe she'd blend in with the duvet.

"Hello?" She whispered, not because she was afraid of waking her grandmother—who spent most nights in an Ambien coma—but because Rory was afraid she didn't actually want the person to know she was there. She could live without meeting BTK or the Green River Killer, thank you.

Curious, she grabbed the flashlight she kept by the bed that could easily double as a truncheon, and stepped out onto the stone balcony.

"Jess!"

He sat on the edge of the railing, smirking down at the design arranged on the floor. He'd used cherries to outline the words _thought I'd stop by_ in ripe, red fruit.

"Did you use all of them for this?" She pointed to the fruitgram.

"Nah, I saved some for you." Jess handed her an unopened container of red-black cherries. "Thought you might be hungry since you didn't eat anything earlier."

"Thanks," a smile quietly expanded across her face. "Come inside."

Rory's bedroom was more inviting in the dark. "Is this cool?" He asked, sitting down on the bed and tossing his jacket on the floor.

"It's fine," she assured, popping a cherry in her mouth. "Do whatever you want."

"Okay." Jess slipped out of his shoes, took his keys, phone, and pen out of his pocket, and rolled onto his stomach, burying his face in her sheets. "Thanks. I think I'll just stay like this if you don't mind."

Rory leaned against the headboard and deposited the pits into a fingerbowl on her nightstand. She smiled at his scruffy, unshaved form. "I read some of your book."

"Really?" He turned on his side to look at her. "What did you think of it?'

"I think you're going to be very successful," she said carefully. "How much of it was autobiographical?"

"Not much," Jess answered, looking away.

She turned to a marked page and read, "'The sores around his mouth told me more than the fine crystals on the inside of his nose or the eightball on his glass coffee table. Addicts are precarious people, even if they're parents. Their head could be roiling with Olney's Lesions, eaten at and barely functioning, or flooded with electricity and rogue compounds. On amphetamines, my brain devolved into a giant chemical reaction, constantly sustaining itself with its products, an enzyme without a stop codon. When Jimmy handed me the pipe I could feel my eyes dilate and my pores open up, ready to sweat, to quiver while the methyl groups attacked to my dopamine receptors and swam around in my bloodstream like otters biting at the synaptic cleft. I groaned and fell back on the couch; I couldn't move. My father smiled and sucked in the smoldering air.'"

"It's good writing, whether it's true or not," Rory said quietly, closing the paperback and leaving it on her stomach. "You're going to go a long way."

"That part is true," he confessed, sitting up.

"You could have died," she answered. The bluish light made his eyes dark.

He shrugged. "Yeah. Keep reading and you might feel a little better about it. That's the best way I can explain it."

Jess reached over and took the book out of her hands, his fingertips like an adrenaline injection. Rory straightened up and stared him down, her eyes fluorescent with activity. "Why did you come back to see me?"

The fact that she had a boyfriend, that she was in a dark bedroom at midnight with Jess in her bed with her grandmother dead asleep in the room next door and the insistent, jockeying voice of Logan stabbing her in the eardrums—_what's your problem?_—made her burn for the payoff.

"There's something I want before I leave." In her gray T-shirt and knit shorts, this was not the way she wanted it to happen. C. Gilson was calling her name from the dresser.

"Not tonight. We wont be able to sleep afterwards. Give me a couple days."

There was her consent and her love laid out in front of him the way Jimmy's habit had been, unmistakable and impossible to refuse. "Make sure he's not here," Jess softly growled. He leaned forward and kissed her hard on the mouth, pressing her lips apart with his tongue and scratching her cheeks with his beard. Rory pulled him on top of her, relishing in the pressure of his body laying into hers.

"Can you pick me up on Saturday?" She asked, feeling his wolfish curls with her hands. "The house will be empty."

"Sure." He warmed her back and her stomach with his hands. "I know where to find you."


	3. Romantic Fallacy

AN: I'm writing this from my sickbed, which has keep me inside even though we just had the first snow of the season. At least something got finished. I really appreciated all the feedback I got for the last chapter, and I would appreciate your comments on this one as well. Read and review.

**Romantic Fallacy**

"How much longer are you sticking around?" Luke asked, wiping a glass clean with a fresh rag. "Thought you had to be in Boston by the weekend."

"Got pushed back," Jess explained. "I've got some other stuff to do while I'm here besides work. I should be heading out Monday morning."

"I saw you driving around in Hartford the other day. Your car is easy to spot."

"Really? I've seen a couple other people with it around town, two different types of people, actually. One half of them are old, rich, white men, and the other half are young, rich, black men. For some reason, I don't fit into either category."

"Can't imagine why," Luke commented. "You know, most people with that—" he pointed out the window of the diner "—are snobs or drug dealers."

"I could be labeled as either."

The distrustful look from his uncle made Jess smile into his coffee cup. The bell above the door to the diner rang, and the expression on Luke's face took on the appearance of a contorted muscle. "Eh," he said tonelessly. "What do you want?"

Logan approached the counter while Jess silently drank the rest of his coffee. "Sorry to bother you, but is Lorelai around?"

"No," he deadpanned. It's ten in the morning, she's where most Americans without trust funds are right now: work."

"I tried calling her at the Inn but that French putz wouldn't put me through."

"Michelle is like an oyster, he filters out junk."

"I was wondering if she'd heard from Rory."

"Not likely," Luke picked up a broom and started sweeping over Logan's shoes. "Excuse me," he bristled.

Tossing some bills on the counter, Jess stood from his barstool. "What do you need to ask her?" Jess asked. "We're supposed to meet up today."

"I just need to talk to her."

"Call her."

Logan's face wore a pained expression. "She won't return my calls."

Jess cocked an eyebrow, moving towards the door. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why."

Following him, Logan tolerated the jibe in lieu of information. "I drove a Benz when I was a junior in high school," he chided once they'd reached the sidewalk. The way he stood, he wanted Jess to see his Porsche parked across the street.

"Yeah, but I didn't buy mine with daddy's plastic. Girls like a self-made man, Huntz. You could be one of us."

"Why wont Rory talk to me?" Logan approached the dark haired Sicilian, water flecked and steely in his gaze. "You better not be fucking around with my girlfriend."

He ignored the comment and crossed his arms. "If you've got something you want her to hear then tell me. Otherwise I'm gonna half to run you over with my rims. Don't make my insurance rate go up." Jess nudged the interworkings of the tire with his boot.

"Just tell her to check her voicemail," he said, controlled and almost forcefully relaxed. "It was good to see you," Logan conceited. He turned on his heel and crossed the street while Jess lit up a cigarette.

--

Paris straightened her Anne Taylor sweater and strode through the lobby of the Holtshoucher Club. Rory had invited her to her DAR luncheon so they could "catch up on some things." Her semester at Yale had just started, and Paris was hoping to catch her friend up on how big of a mistake she was making. The dinning hall had artfully decorated windows and flower arrangements that Rory had most likely put together herself, crisp white orchids and lilies in sleek gold vases. Her mailed invitation had been printed on mint colored paper, so Paris had gone for a conservative, tope sundress with green flowers and plant matter blossoming across the fabric. Her cardigan matched one of the livelier hues on her dress, and, unintentionally, the emerald carpet in the day room. With her light brown hair in an artful twist, she blended in with the scenery perfectly. She made more of a statement with her personality than anything else; Paris believed that outrageous clothes would make her less serious and more comical.

When she reached the threshold to the softly glowing day room a member of the staff escorted her to a grouping of rattan chairs on the day porch. "Paris," Rory greeted, walking towards her friend in a gold ensemble that made her shimmer when she walked. "I'm so glad you came."

"Thanks for inviting me," she said, looking at the densely populated porch, gazebo, and garden. There were more people than Paris had been expecting.

"You're welcome." Lowering her voice, Rory said, "I am actually happy you came. There's not really anyone for me to talk to here that's under the age of thirty-five."

"Yeah, except for Mike Campbell over there."

"What?"

Rory turned and saw Logan flanked by one of the Holtshoucher Club escorts.

"Why is he here?" Rory stage whispered to Paris. "I didn't invite him."

"There's free booze," Paris deadpanned. "You don't need another reason."

"Can I talk to you for a second?" Logan approached. Rory set down her tumbler of lemonade and rum on a crystal coaster. "About what?"

"Please, Ace. Just ten minutes of your time. I promise."

"I'm hosting an event," Rory gestured towards the groups of prominent Hartford residents strutting on the putting green or exchanging gossip in the nearby cabañas. "I can't just leave. Besides," she lowered her voice, "this isn't the place to talk about anything private. You know that."

Logan grabbed her wrist in a claiming way, tugging but not harming. "We'll go in the other room. C'mon." He wrapped his hand around hers to make it look like they had their fingers cupped, a member of the staff opened the glass door to the clubhouse for them. He walked down the hall, past a couple of private offices and a parlor, into a mostly unused meeting room. Rory closed the door behind her and crossed her arms as if she were cold.

"Why haven't you returned my calls?" Logan asked, hands in his kaki pockets. "I've been trying to get up with you to apologize for the other night for days."

"I've been busy."

"Do you know how I found you? Your assistant. At least she had the common courtesy to tell me where you were going to be today."

"I'm only hosting this event for another half-hour. I'm supposed to meet up with a friend at two."

"Are you meeting Jess? Don't lie." Coolly, he threw her own words back at her. Rory was momentarily frozen by the chill.

"Yes," she answered, a polite, almost lazy smile on her face. Her dress was the brightest thing in the room. "He won't be in town for much longer and I wanted to say goodbye."

"I don't like it when you're around him."

She patted her dewy hairline with a Kleenex; for once, she hoped that the lines of her lingerie would show through the thin fabric of her dress. "I'm not doing anything wrong by seeing an old friend. I've missed being able to talk to someone besides professors about books and art. Not all of us consider proof labeling great literature."

A bead of sweat dripped down his neck. Rory watched as the collar of his Ralph Lauren rugby shirt slowly absorbed the moisture.

An invisible line settled between them. Logan shifted under its weight. "We'll talk about this later."

Her back was straight despite the heat and the overbearing pressure of humidity. "It was nice seeing you, Logan," she said, her peach colored mouth an artful gash across her cheeks.

He breezed past her, sending the air in the room flying, awakening the residual elements that she'd stored since high school. _Bye bye, sweetheart. We'll chat later_. Outside, the wind chimes roared and the sun struck through the glass window, warming the hollow of her throat. Rory shivered and looked at the grandfather clock that had just begun to chime: two notes, vibrant and unmistakable like the pair of golden eyes watching her from the doorway.


End file.
